I rang my GP surgical procedure for an appointment. A recorded message informed me if I had a life-threatening situation, to hold up and dial 999. A couple of seconds later one other recorded message in a unique voice additionally informed me the identical. A couple of seconds later yet one more message informed me the clinicians have been all busy. Subsequent, a message supplied an internet session.
I duly stuffed in an e-form. I’ve no thought how any internet-based service is meant to assist the hundreds of thousands of over-60s who aren’t on-line. Residing with out the web was as soon as a life-style selection. Now it is changing into a matter of getting or not getting NHS assist. How has this been allowed to occur?
The Railway Youngsters Return, now in cinemas, tells the story of a younger black American soldier on the run from brutal US navy police. The plot recollects true occasions in wartime Britain when hundreds of black troopers have been stationed right here earlier than the 1944 Normandy landings. They got here from a United States the place segregation was rife. To their shock and delight, they discovered themselves warmly greeted in England. Whereas there have been occasional racist incidents, in the principle the black troopers have been welcomed in pubs and at native dances the place, to the horror of some white GIs, they danced with white girls – unthinkable again dwelling within the Deep South.
So why is that this outstanding chapter in historical past so little identified? Why do our colleges not educate our kids in regards to the friendship and respect between black American servicemen and British civilians within the Nineteen Forties – and the impetus it gave to the US civil rights motion after the battle?
Perhaps it does not slot in with the accepted narrative that Britain is a racist nation, steeped in bigotry and imperial guilt. Studying the reality in regards to the black troopers’ expertise right here may make us proud to be British. And that might by no means do, would it not?